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The college system we have in America is an absolute joke. I've said it before and I'll say it again: college in the USA, for the most part, is more an economic enterprise than an educational one. Let's face it folks: the presidents of universities probably don't care as much about how much you LEARN (well, only to the extent that the high grades guarantees their positions —but you get my drift, I'm talking about learning on a personal level, not a statistical one); they care about how much they EARN.

All of it goes back to the ridiculous tuition that students have to pay for the first 4 years of their undergraduate education, much of which is laced with classes that are not only completely irrelevant to their degree(s), but are not of any interest to the student in question. Of course, this is usually countered with the pretense of "receiving a well-rounded education!" But I only agree with that to a certain extent. That education is only truly well-rounded if you RETAIN it. If you are uninterested enough in what you're learning, it won't take you very long to forget the bulk of it. And if you don't, then at least in UT's case, that's a waste of $1,795 (the average spent per class, as of this semester) for every class from which you ultimately learned nothing.

But then they'll say, "But you'll remember some of those nuggets, and at the very least they'll give you some talking points if you happen to find yourself across the table with someone interested in that subject." You know, maybe that was true before the World Wide Web became so pervasive, but now I think that idea is well past its prime. All the information contained in periodicals, journals, and encyclopedias that once required a trip to a university-grade library to peruse are now all at your fingertips. I think you can learn some interesting things about those subjects just by going on Facebook. You might be able to pick up some very interesting things on, say, art, by looking at your news feed. Maybe you have a friend who's very into art and constantly posts intriguing things about it. And that's the kicker, guys: by taking that course of action, you can not only save almost $2,000 by NOT taking a related university course, but you can learn only what you WANT to learn about it—and you won't be graded on it!

College, or at least its undergraduate form, is so incredibly rife with flaws and is desperately in need of change. College should be an institution that really DOES cultivate learning. It should be a place for a person to find their passion, and when they do find it (or if they came in already having it), they should be able to pursue it totally unrestrained by convoluted processes and rules. If I want to major in a particular field, there shouldn't be a restricted amount of time that is allotted to me to complete a certain number of hours and, if I couldn't quite get there (say, because of not getting into UT the first year), I get shafted and have to deal with it because that's just the way it is. You KNOW that something is wrong when you find most people shrugging and saying "that's just the way it is."

The university system in America needs to be passion-oriented. I don't know what on God's green earth it's centered on right now *other* than money (since money isn't really a corollary to passion), but it is NOT passion. But you know what? The university bigwigs, the ones on educational boards and their superiors, don't want to do that. Who wants to shake up the status quo when those guys are already benefiting from it? Why endanger their job security and put them in a precarious position? "So what if a lot of students get ground up in the rusty cogs of the antiquated bureaucratic process? That's life."

But it's really only life if we sit by idly and continue to be told that it is.

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